Hacker News: bsmith

New comment by bsmith in "Google broke reCAPTCHA for de-googled Android users"

bsmith — Fri, 08 May 2026 23:31:25 +0000

If you dont need filesharing, you can just setup wireguard, setup a network drive on your phone's files app.l, and then when connected it'll feel like native file browsing.

New comment by bsmith in "The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work"

bsmith — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:31:12 +0000

All big tech companies are mandating employees to use AI for tasks. Unless there's a similar movement to open source that is AI-free, you're going to need to be tech-free of you want to avoid companies that use AI.

New comment by bsmith in "Tailscale's new macOS home"

bsmith — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:24:11 +0000

I use almost plain old wireguard, hosting a wg-easy container that has a nice web gui wrapper that makes it easy with QR codes, no configuration files to create like just wireguard. It's the technology that Tailscale uses, so why would you complicate it, adding more risk?

The incident seems like it was never exploited, and it was fixed within 24 hours. However, in my opinion, the fact that this COULD happen, let alone that id DID happen, is too much risk, and why I switched immediately after hearing about it.

AI overview of the incident:

TS-2023-001:

Node Sharing Across Tailnets Without Authorization (January 2023) A bug in Tailscale's node sharing logic allowed the creation of sharing invitations by unauthorized users. A malicious individual who knew a target node's database ID could generate and accept a sharing invite for that node without being an admin of the target node's tailnet — for any node in any tailnet. Circl So in practice, a node from one unrelated tailnet could be pulled into another person's tailnet without the owner's consent. A node's ID is only visible in the API or admin console, by admins of either the node's tailnet or a tailnet to which that node has already been shared Circl — which limited exploitability, since you'd need to already know the target's internal database ID (a random 64-bit integer, not easily guessable). Tailscale fixed it server-side on 2023-01-12 and stated they verified it was never exploited. The bug reporter (Benjamin Roberts, HN user tsujamin) noted it was discovered accidentally while managing their own tailnet. The Hacker News thread praised Tailscale for deploying a fix within 24 hours:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34420142

TS-2024-002:

ACL Overwrites Across Tailnets (May 2023 – July 2024) There's also a second related incident that's perhaps even more alarming in concept: an admin user could overwrite the ACLs of one tailnet with ACLs from another tailnet. Any user who was an Admin in multiple tailnets and edited ACLs in the admin console between May 22, 2023 and July 17th, 2024 could trigger this bug after switching the active tailnet. Tailscale This one involved the tailnet-switching feature in the admin console accidentally "bleeding" policy configuration between separate, unrelated tailnets.

New comment by bsmith in "Tailscale's new macOS home"

bsmith — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:18:07 +0000

I don't understand why people are still using Tailscale after the issue they had where two independent tunnels were connected together.

New comment by bsmith in "A beginner's guide to split keyboards"

bsmith — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 07:39:14 +0000

I've been rocking the Dygma Defy since it came out and it's been amazing. Their software has been buggy though, and left me rebuilding key maps more than once. I just wished it had a rotary dial

New comment by bsmith in "Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown"

bsmith — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:34:18 +0000

Don't forget regex!

New comment by bsmith in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)"

bsmith — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 03:40:14 +0000

Yeah, sorry about that, and thanks for the heads up!

I've struggled with the dictionary a few different times. Here's to hoping the 12dicts wordlist 2of12inf is a better choice than my previous ones :D

The new dictionary is live!

New comment by bsmith in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)"

bsmith — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:43:25 +0000

https://spanara.app

Spanara - A word game inspired by the "license plate game" my wife taught me while we lived in Finland. License plates in Finland always start with 3 letters, so out on our walks we'd try to come up with a word quickly, and got more kudos for "good" words. This was a first attempt at a personal project using AI.

I am currently working on a new mode that is more like what played walking around: a few rounds in rapid fire, very little time to think before the next round.

New comment by bsmith in "Thoughts on Mechanical Keyboards and the ZSA Moonlander"

bsmith — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 05:52:13 +0000

I love my Dygma Defy: https://dygma.com/products/dygma-defy

New comment by bsmith in "Show HN: Spanara – Yet Another Word Game"

bsmith — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 02:31:44 +0000

Yeah, just guess I'm a bit confused, because the green sticks I've chosen are valid for both A and F, so I'm not quite getting how F got ruled out in that instance.

New comment by bsmith in "Show HN: Spanara – Yet Another Word Game"

bsmith — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 01:59:47 +0000

Thanks for trying it out! And thanks for the word example, I'll have to find a better dictionary.

And your game was fun. I noticed it gave me a letter (A) when it still could have been another (F) https://imgur.com/a/7EU7XAo.

Show HN: Spanara – Yet Another Word Game

bsmith — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:36:13 +0000

This was inspired by a game my wife introduced me to in Finland, where license plates always started with 3 letters. The game was to come up with the "best" word, using those 3 letters, in the same order as they appeared on the plate. Thought it would be a fun app, so here it is. What do you think? Feedback appreciated :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45201070

Points: 2

# Comments: 6

New comment by bsmith in "Show HN: The Montana MiniComputer"

bsmith — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 19:09:25 +0000

"Woooo" Slaps chalk board. "Are you pumped for today's lesson?!" -Brock

Best classes ever.

New comment by bsmith in "Gemini 2.5 Flash"

bsmith — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 20:02:03 +0000

Using AI to debug code at 2am sounds like pure insanity.

New comment by bsmith in "Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence"

bsmith — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 22:43:12 +0000

Considering orthodontic treatments, no. I imagine you could damage the connective tissues under the gums though.

New comment by bsmith in "What Is Entropy?"

bsmith — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 07:30:20 +0000

Couldn't you just add a control (PID/Kalman filter/etc) to coverage on a stability of some local "most" truth?

New comment by bsmith in "What is the most useful project you have worked on?"

bsmith — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 02:41:40 +0000

Yes I believe you can look up anyone's salary in Finland, but you have to officially request it, and not sure how that's done. Some organization requests all the high earners and posts them online, so those above that amount can be identified. Everyone knows about it but find Finns are "if you have it, don't show it", and so it's not a problem as far as I know. It's the same as companies being transparent about salaries, it seems absurd to those not exposed to these kinds of companies, but after being part it's not a big deal. You're either not interested, or you use it as a tool to leverage yourself up.

New comment by bsmith in "What is the most useful project you have worked on?"

bsmith — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 02:35:11 +0000

It was waterfall, but a lot of agile inside. Instead of development from waterfall, developers get a proof of concept up in front of the client SMEs as soon as possible, and then get it into their hands testing as soon as possible. In this way, the people working on the requirements were intimately familiar with the inner workings and offering feedback very quickly, to save time if solutions weren't working as intended. Each team would have 3-5 major projects so as soon as the first project didn't fill the full meeting, other priorities started getting their requirements. These meetings would be a touch base and rehash old topics if any solutions needed a pivot.

Once the SMEs and developers signed off on the solution, then it could go to the test part of waterfall, system test, everything launched once during the rollout window. And then maintenance mode.

New comment by bsmith in "What is the most useful project you have worked on?"

bsmith — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 21:26:19 +0000

I'd love to, this is exactly the use case for digital technology; automate the stuff we can making more time for more meaningful taska for everyone. Finland is ahead of it's time for these kinds of integrations. Problem is, it requires a central authority having all of the data, and the US has absolutely zero trust in it's government to not fuck it up. With good reason

New comment by bsmith in "What is the most useful project you have worked on?"

bsmith — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 21:23:26 +0000

Old boring tech, VB.NET and t-SQL. Never understood the hate for VB.NET, I swear it's from people misconstruing VBA, which is awful, or they had terrible infra and coding standards. The system we had was a general core product that was configurable (I mean, taxes are the same, they just have different rules), but also customizable. Finland wasn't the first international project, but it was maybe the biggest one, so a lot of the solutions ended up being custom for the project. Unfortunately been difficult to find work with the boring tech background, but it was enjoyable (especially considering it was taxes).